Surgeon Simulator Review
Played on PC
Developed by Bossa Studios
Released 19th April 2013 (A&E Anniversary Edition released 12th August 2014)
Bossa Studios is an indie development team that uses Game Jams—making brand new games from scratch within a limited time- to start the creative process for future projects. By coming together once a month, the team hosts its internal game jams over two days, continuously pumping out new formulas, IPs, and mechanic prototypes that could fuel its projects for the upcoming months.
"We found out that the best ideas and the best concepts that we were getting were the things in a more organic way: the ideas that people were just gathering in a bar and discussing, and suddenly one of the coders would come in on a Monday saying ‘hey, look what I did over the weekend…'" told studio co-founder Roberta Lucca to the Guardian back in 2014 when the game blew up in popularity.
This burst of attention was from one of their Game Jam results, 'Surgeon Simulator', after several YouTube playthroughs were made of the demo. Feeling like they had to provide a more polished experience, the team would settle down for a couple of months to refine the game and release a full version on Steam later, seemingly confirming 'Surgeon Simulator' as a staple within indie games. Despite the studio not wanting to be pigeon-holed as that one studio that made 'Surgeon Simulator', it has been hard for them to escape that legacy, especially with how their most popular titles are remixes of the core gameplay loop founded in this 2013 game, taking form as the sequel 'Surgeon Simulator 2' or as off-shoots like 'I Am Bread' and 'I Am Fish'.
Story
Surprisingly, there is a narrative here, but I won't be factoring it into my final score with how condensed its summary and outline of details are. For those curious, you play as a surgeon named Nigel Burke, who carries out several operations on an unfortunate patient named "Bob" before doing these operations in outer space and on aliens and becoming the best surgeon in the world. It's direct, focused more on humour than reasoning, and perfectly parallel to how the rest of the game shapes itself up to be.
Gameplay
The gameplay had the right combination of comedy in its physics and the tension in the necessary precision to make this an entertaining arcade-style playthrough. Throughout 'Surgeon Simulator', you'll be partaking in various surgeries where the player's hand's rotation and position are based on your mouse inputs, while keyboard inputs dictate which of your fingers are in an open and closed position. While its not the first game with intentionally awkward controls, that honour seems to go to 'QWOP', 'Surgeon Simulator' does seem to be the first indie game to further popularise this idea with games like 'Octodad: Dadliest Catch' or 'I Am Bread' coming to fray soon after this game's rise.
What makes this purposefully difficult time rewarding is how failure doesn't feel like you lost something gravely. Failing to accurately cut out "Bob's" liver or accidentally smacking too much of their skull away simply results in an accelerating decrease in their blood levels, the physics on your hammer or their organs going into overdrive and a comical message of "Surgery Failed, And it was going so well..." amp up this morbid humour of offing your patient mid-surgery. Meanwhile, success can be quantified to gradings and timed attempts, introducing these perfectionist and speedrunning capabilities into the average gameplay loop.
The more in-depth control needed over your hand's movement introduces as much frustration as it does the opportunity for a skill ceiling and control over the physics. Either spend your time flinging tools into the patient's open body, slapping their face and flipping them off, or you could use some of that surgical precision to limit their blood loss by being careful in cutting their organs' tubes and injecting them with the blood-slowing syringes. The most difficult part about each surgery (there was a total of 5 in the Anniversary Edition that I played) was trying to figure out what you had to do, which ventricle to cut, which order of organs and tools to use, and not the controls themselves. Picking up the scalpel or hammer or whatever you needed was fairly simple and not as punishing to aim with as you'd expect, especially with that blood-slowing syringe that completely stops any blood loss that you might incur via misstep.
You can up the anti on these regular surgeries by having them take place in space where zero gravity causes all pieces to float or within the back of a poorly-driven ambulance causing items to fly about rapidly, however, other than the occassional physics engine hiccup that screws you over, these surgeries are about as seemless as the regular ones. Finally, there are also the special surgeries, such as an alien autopsy or a heart transplant on Trump, but yet again, these aren't too drastically varied to pay attention to, with their absurd circumstances taking up much of their spotlights rather than the actual gameplay behind them.
The comedy here is its strong suit, and even if there is potential for variation via modifiers and playstyles that introduce a fun moment of challenge, the loop here is quite straightforward. You're not going to play this game as a test of your keyboard and mouse skills, but rather to fling some surgical tools about, fail, get a funny achievement and pass the surgery before moving on or quitting out.
Since 2013, this formula has mostly remained untouched, with many of the previous games listed following suit, and while that could be because this game has aged quite well since its decade-ago debut, it could also be because there's no real easy way to smooth out purposely clunky controls. The same could be said for the way it tackles humour, as the idea of outlandish physics mixed with "dark" comedy is not that far off from what most find funny today - the foundations of its identity being ridiculousness can also be seen in the multiple inspired games.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere, while this may seem outlandish, is phenomenal. The soundtrack is soothful but alarming, with the main menu deploying this smooth jazz feel that fits amazingly into that hospital theme. The operating themes incorporate a heartbeat monitor or a breathing sound effect before transitioning into this melodic, upbeat synth action that somehow oddly fits each situation of an eye or brain transplant. It's surgical but also packs enough sonic power to be enjoyable outside of these contexts. Black Heron, the audio production team that created this incredible soundtrack, absolutely did not need to make something so amazing for a "silly hospital game", but I'm glad they did.
Visually, it establishes enough of that goofy aesthetic without going overboard. The models are clean and simple, distinct from each other without standing out too much, and the bold colouring doesn't divert any attention away from the unserious hospital style. It's not as elegantly put together as the music, but it does have enough attention put into it to seem memorable and for the otherwise dark humour to work effortlessly.
Gameplay - 6.5/10
Atmosphere - 8.5/10
Good
A short gaming pitstop for if you ever feel like dabbling with humorously clumsy physics.
